Obsessive Compulsive Disorder

Obsessive Compulsive Disorder

Frequent obsessive thoughtsand constantly trying to tame those thoughts with actions (like hand washing)those are the symptoms of obsessive-compulsive disorder. If you have this internal battle, you know it can take over your life. With counseling and medications, you can quiet the turmoil inside.

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Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is used to treat obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) by changing the way people think and act.

"Cognitive" means how people think, and "behavioral" means what they do. A CBT therapist will explain OCD and help people with OCD make a list of all their worries, from the smallest to the largest. The therapist will then show them how to fight back against OCD, one worry at a time, by letting them feel anxious without doing their compulsion. The worry goes up—and then comes down. This is repeated until that thing no longer causes the person to worry. Once people start fighting back against OCD, they feel stronger and in charge of their lives again.

With obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), acting out compulsions can seem helpful by making people's worries go away for a while. But the worries come back, and get stronger and stronger over time. People might end up spending a lot of time doing their compulsive actions over and over, and miss out on things that make them happy, like spending time with friends.

With obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), compulsions are things people think they have to do to get rid of anxiety. Compulsions make the anxiety go away, but then it comes right back. Doing the action might make people feel safer and less worried. For example:

If people are worried about germs, they might wash their hands lots of times.

If they're worried that something might make them sick, they might check over and over again that their food is safe to eat.

If they’re worried someone is going to break into their house, they might need to check that the door is locked a certain number of times.

They might have to touch both shoulders at the same time, or say certain things in their head.

Sometimes people don’t know what they’re worried about, but they just don’t feel right until they do certain actions, like line things up or count when they go up the stairs.

Obsessions are thoughts that don’t go away. People with OCD worry about lots of different things. Common obsessions include worrying about germs making them sick, worrying about something bad happening to them or someone they care about, or even that they might hurt someone or do something bad.

People with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) have persistent, upsetting thoughts (obsessions) and use rituals (compulsions) to control the anxiety these thoughts produce; most of the time, the rituals end up controlling them. For example, if people are obsessed with germs or dirt, they may develop a compulsion to wash their hands over and over again. If they develop an obsession with intruders, they may lock and relock their doors many times before going to bed.

Performing such rituals is not pleasurable. At best, it produces temporary relief from the anxiety created by obsessive thoughts. Some common obsessions include having frequent thoughts of violence and harming loved ones, persistently thinking about performing sexual acts to people they dislike, or having thoughts that are prohibited by religious beliefs.

While healthy people also have rituals, such as checking to see if the stove is off several times before leaving the house, people with OCD perform their rituals even though doing so interferes with daily life. Although most adults with OCD recognize that what they are doing is senseless, some adults and most children may not realize that their behavior is out of the ordinary.

OCD usually responds well to treatment with certain medications and/or exposure-based psychotherapy, in which people face situations that cause fear or anxiety and become less sensitive (desensitized) to them.